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- Topic: Russian >
- "Дима не знает папу."
22 Comments
375
I too am unclear on whether this is better translated to:
Dima doesn't know a father. (meaning he's never known what it's like to have a dad)
or
Dima doesn't know Dad. (meaning you're talking about your own father, no relation to Dima)
Can any native speaker help?
1615
FEI (For Everyone's Information): In short form, savoir is to know things, connaitre is to know people. See:
https://www.thoughtco.com/savoir-vs-connaitre-1368940
1615
The words are often cut off in the slow versions. It is extremely time-consuming and difficult to edit sound down to one word, especially when a word is being extracted from a string of words (a spoken sentence). If it's too long, you often get pieces of the previous or subsequent word mixed. Getting a perfect sound for the slow track would be extremely expensive and time-consuming. I rely on the slow version to get the basic word down, but listen to the fast track for endings. Sometimes you just have to make an educated guess, usually based on the module you're studying.
This is true of every language on Duo - and in other language programs, too. Often, you get what you pay for.
1615
In English, the presence or absence of an article or determiner turns "dad" into a proper noun - a name for a person, e.g. "Dad is a great guy". With the article, "dad" is just a descriptive noun. "My dad/father/papa." Perhaps most clearly"Dad is my dad" is like saying "Henry is my dad."
знать (znatʹ) [znatʲ] impf (perfective узна́ть) "to know" From Old East Slavic знати (znati), from Proto-Slavic *znati, from Proto-Balto-Slavic *źnōˀtei, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵnéh₃t, from *ǵneh₃- (“to know”), whence English know, cunning, canny, notice and gnostic (the latter two via Latin and Greek, respectively), Latin cognoscō ("I know", whence Spanish conocer, French connaître, Italian conoscere, Portuguese conhecer), Ancient Greek γνωρίζω (gnōrízō, “I know”) and γνῶσις (gnôsis, “knowledge”), Albanian njoh (“I know, recognise”), and Persian شناختن (šenāxtæn, “to know”).